One path is to keep doing what you do today: jumping through endless supplier meetings, putting out fires around traveler service issues, continually hacking away towards inbox zero… In short, doing all those things that add short-term tactical value.

The other path leads to adding higher, more strategic value by focusing on travel’s broader business impact. I’ll preach about taking this path at GBTA in Boston on July 17th.

One area along this path that I think is rife with opportunity is non-employee travel. Think recruiting trips for on-site interviews, new-hire training, or guest visits such as speakers, partners, or customers.

Most all the current corporate travel tools and systems were built for current employees. If you worry that your own travelers don’t enjoy that experience, how do you think your non-employee travelers feel?Continue reading →

Imagine giving management a choice between these two travel programs: “Nickels and Dimes” and “Goldmine”.

In the Nickels and Dimes program, they get travelers who are more burned out, more likely to quit, have less productivity, report higher rates of sickness, are less willing to travel, and for the kicker, produce 22% less effective trips.

In the Goldmine program, they get the opposite – happier, healthier, more productive travelers who are more willing to travel and – pay attention – produce more effective trips.

Of course the Goldmine program is going to be more expensive. Just like an iPhone is more expensive than a cheap flip phone…you get what you pay for.

Like this:

Road warriors, by definition, do a lot of traveling. All their airline tickets add up to some pretty big expenses, as do the hours they spend inside airplanes.

Why not take those two pieces of data and show what it costs business folks to fly per hour? Let’s face it, talking about price per mile might be great for aviation pros, but it’s not great for briefing management about travel expenses.

ARC’s Definitive Data, Air Clarity’s Innovative Analysis

Air Clarity, my firm’s air spend benchmarking tool, crunched a few million airline tickets from ARC’s corporate ticket database to get the answers. Since ARC stores all travel agency tickets sold in the U.S. on most every airline (excluding Southwest and a few other low cost airlines), this data is as good as it gets.

Here’s what the price per flight hour looks like, based on the average hourly prices paid by roughly 2,100 corporate travel programs:

The quick answer: About $80 an hour for short haul (domestic) flights; about $110 an hour for long haul flights

Doesn’t that make for a much easier conversation about the cost of air travel?

For context, this study by American Express GBT, ARC and my firm found that the average road warrior earned about $80 an hour, assuming 2,000 work hours per year.

Travel managers, try talking to your business stakeholders about the price per hour of air travel, and see if that doesn’t make for more engaged discussions.

Custom Industry Peer Group Benchmarks

If you’re wondering what your company’s price per hour is, and how that compares to other firms in your industry, good news…tClara is organizing industry peer groups to help provide even better value from our Air Clarity benchmark data. Here are the groups we’re starting:

If you’re a travel manager interested in one of our industry peer groups, follow the group by signing up here…no cost, no obligation.

More information about Air Clarity’s benchmark reports for corporate travel managers, TMCs and airlines is here.

American Express GBT is phasing in a $10 surcharge for handling airline tickets from carriers who don’t use common industry channels for sales and settlement. (More coverage here, here and here.)

Think of this as the opposite of the €16 surcharge that Lufthansa Group is applying to tickets purchased via the traditional GDS/TMC channel. One happens if you buy in the GDS, the other happens if your LCC airline doesn’t play there.

Both of these surcharges annoy buyers. “What – you’re going to charge me more based on where I buy a ticket, or who I buy it from – that’s outrageous!”

In fact, it makes perfect sense. Lufthansa and GBT make the same point – their costs to Continue reading →

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Surely a ton of travel creates unique strains for road warriors and their families.

Fortunately, these problems are fairly predictable, and can be managed with a bit of planning, effort and honest communication. If you know a road warrior or two, read on, as they may well benefit from the sage advice from Megan Bearce, author, licensed marriage and family therapist, and wife of a road warrior.

I connected with Megan on the issue of traveler friction, something she knows well, especially as it impacts couples and families. She’s written a terrific book on this subject, and offers the following practical advice.

A Guest Post From Megan Bearce:

I am happy to report that whether you are a road warrior or a “super commuter,” (employees who travels 90 miles or more to their job), physical separation doesn’t have to mean emotional distance. Below are three strategies from my book, Super Commuter Couples: Staying Together When A Job Keeps You Apart, to help your relationship thrive despite being apart.

1) Coming home:

People assume that reuniting after days on the road would be exciting, but in reality this Continue reading →

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Quick – name three metrics that travel managers care most about…and no, you can’t say savings, savings and savings.

Savings, for sure, maybe followed by discounts and policy compliance, or average ticket price/room/car rate. These are time-tested, industry-accepted, common-sense metrics that are the foundation for status-quo management of the travel category.

(Going to GBTA’s Convention? See a related meet-up note at the end of this post)

Before you reject my call to demote these traditional metrics, consider the maxim “Measure what matters”. Note that it isn’t “Measure what’s laying around, looking like it matters”. It’s not “Measure what we’ve always measured”.

It’s the “what matters” part that’s the key. That, and an evolved view of travel management’s mission.

Shouldn’t the goal of managing travel be to create the most value from whatever the travel budget is? To create the biggest business impact, net of the cost? Sure…which means we need to think about measuring said impact. Continue reading →

Travel managers, you’re gonna need a two-channel booking strategy. Maybe not this year, but fairly soon in the scheme of corporate travel time.

The second shoe dropped last week, when The Company Dime broke the news (paywall, worth it) about airlines making complex trips (roughly anything not a simple one-way or round-trip) more expensive – sometimes moderately, sometimes drastically more expensive.

Reliable sources estimate these complex trips to be anywhere from 7% to 16% of a corporate account’s transactions, depending on your definition and travel patterns. Call it 10% – that’s a significant chunk of bookings that are now at risk of much higher prices.

The cost-avoiding solution is to book each individual destination within the itinerary as

Innovation and traveler friction are popular topics for you folks, so here are a few quick profiles of new ways to make life easier for travelers.

DUFL – Allows travelers to travel without luggage. A mashup of FedEx and your favorite Downton Abbey butler. DUFL stocks a private closet with your travel clothes, and sends them to your hotel in advance of your arrival. You leave the DUFL suitcase at the hotel upon checkout, and DUFL retrieves it, cleans and repacks your clothes, ready for your next trip. Yes, there is an app for that. More about DUFL here.

Expensify – Automatically, and near- instantly, reimburses travelers for their on-the-road expenses. Snap a photo of the receipt, and the expense reporting tool automatically cues it for payment the next day. It’s hard to imagine making expense reimbursement any easier. More about this feature here. Hat tip to BTN for the coverage.

FlyAnotherDay – Helps travelers and planners avoid trips to major cities around the globe during city-wide events. An easy way to check a destination’s potential for travel congestion. A new service with affordable pricing that solves a pesky problem.

What3Words – not really a travel app, but keep reading…this app makes finding places really easy, especially those places without a street address. Imagine your travelers wanting to meet on a campus for a recruiting trip, or at a ferry point, or an oil rig. This service makes it easy to identify any location on the globe using three words. Interesting implications for travel risk management, yes?

I have no commercial ties to any of these firms; just a fan of their efforts.

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Let’s agree that all our friends and colleagues who are in the midst of yet another grueling hotel RFP season should have our sympathies.

You’re dealing with big chunks of invisible hotel spend, crappy data on the visible spend, clunky RFP tools, tedious back-and-forth negotiations, last room availability promises that won’t be kept, and disgruntled hoteliers only too happy to poach your travelers with squatter rates that they’ll offer as long as it suits them. Ugh.

Oh, yes – you’re also facing one of the toughest negotiating environments in what, a decade? Ouch.

Speaking of decades, we know you’ve been putting up with this predictably stressful process year after year, for what, two or three decades? Gag.

Hang in their, friends, for the future is much brighter. I saw a glimpse of it at the Beat Live conference in D.C. last week. But fair warning…you’ll need to grit your teeth and open your minds, as it’s not an easy pill to swallow.

Two pills, really. The first is TRIPBAM; the second is dynamic pricing. Here’s how they get you out of the hotel RFP desert: Continue reading →